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2011-04-20

Adobe Flash Troubles: 64-Bit or 32-Bit PAE?

I am a big fan of both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, though unfortunately I haven't been able to watch full episodes of either show in a while because of college work. I have, however, been able to watch clips here and there on their respective websites, but I cannot do the same thing on Hulu, the awesome website that aggregates segments from different TV shows and supports it through advertising. The reason for that is because I supposedly don't have a valid working version of Adobe Flash, and that is probably because I'm running a 64-bit Linux system on my laptop that has a 64-bit processor. As far as I know, Hulu is the only problematic site, because YouTube, online games, and other sites that obviously use Adobe Flash work fine.
I know that 64-bit operating systems are able to recognize RAM amounts greater than 3 GB, which is important for me because my laptop has 4 GB of RAM, and I'd like to put all of that to good use when necessary. I have also heard, though, that using a 32-bit Linux distribution with a PAE modification in the kernel (or something like that) allows the OS to recognize and use up to 4 GB of RAM, up from 3 GB previously. Linux Mint 9 LTS "Isadora" is supported for another 2 years from now, so I'd like to continue using that until either Linux Mint 13 LTS "M[...]a" comes out or, if that doesn't happen, for the next two years, at which point I will likely switch to a snapshot of Debian-based Linux Mint (or maybe #!, I'm not sure). When that happens, I'll choose either between 64-bit or 32-bit with PAE. My question is, do the benefits of a 64-bit OS outweigh the loss of Hulu viewing, or will switching to 32-bit with PAE be the better option with few side effects otherwise? Please let me know in the comments below. Of course, ideally, in one or two years, I'll actually be able to use a working version of Adobe Flash on a 64-bit Linux distribution.

@Anonymous 1: And how exactly would I do that? I'd love to know.@Anonymous 2, John Lewis: I've read about it a lot, but I'm not sure I want to take a chance replacing my otherwise-working 32-bit Adobe Flash. I'm certainly thinking about it, though.Thanks for the tips!

@Anonymous: So then aside from that, running a 64-bit OS doesn't bring any more advantages to the table? That's good to know. Also, as far as I know, the version of Adobe Flash that I'm using is the 64-bit version packaged by the Linux Mint developers ("mint-flashplugin-x64"); should I be using the upstream Ubuntu-packaged 64-bit Adobe Flash plugin, the Adobe Flash Square plugin from Adobe itself, or something else altogether? Thanks for the tip!

I'm running Chromium on 64-bit Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid). I have no problems running Hulu. Also, 64-bit does have some advantages even with less RAM for certain things--compiling code and rendering video, I believe, I are two areas where it is a bit quicker. Unfortunately, the RAM address sizing is bigger so you actually end up with less effective memory.